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Jaboury Ghazoul

2. Many forests
Defining forests
Conceptions of what forests are, and how they are defined, vary depending on who is doing the defining. Foresters, ecologists, or farmers (or for that matter, lawyers, urban planners, or furniture makers) might have very different concepts of forests, as might the people of Great Britain or France compared to those of Brazil or Pakistan. Different environmental and cultural histories affect peoples’ visions of what forests are. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that as many as 800 different definitions of forests and woodland areas have been collated from around the world. Indeed, the many

Jaboury Ghazoul

3. Forest origins
Plants, of sorts, first started flourishing on dry land on ancient Precambrian coastlines around 600 million years ago (Mya). These early colonizers were lichens—associations of algae and fungi. True plants, in the form of mosses and liverworts, came much later at around 450 Mya, but these were, and still are, small organisms that are incapable of supporting a substantial structure. The origins of forests lie in the evolution of a key innovation some 400 Mya: water-conducting canals stiffened with a tough polymer called lignin. These strengthened water-conducting vessels provided structural support that allowed the early small and

Jaboury Ghazoul

5. Forest goods and services
), and various groups of Amerindians in Amazonia.
Forest resources
), and cocoa that are derived from or grown within forested habitats. Across the globe we all rely on many environmental services that forests provide, ranging from regulation of climate and the hydrological cycle to protection of soil resources, protection from hazards, as well as refuges for biodiversity and our own recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual needs.
Timber
Timber is, by far, the most valuable commercial forest commodity, with global trade values of wood products amounting to around US$150 billion. Timber has been the mainstay of economic development for much of civilization’s history. It has been used for the construction of cities, ships, and railroads, and as such has generated the means to centralize economic and political power, through vessels for exploration, trade, and conquest, and networks for communication and control. Moreover, wood fuel (though not, strictly, timber) has powered human progress

Jaboury Ghazoul

4. Disturbance and dynamics
Forests are in a constant state of change, and the natural state of any given woodland applies only, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Hardy, ‘at this point of time, at this point of space’. Some perturbations are dramatic, such as forest fires or storms. Others, such as tree diseases, spread slowly through a forest and are both chronic and cryptic. Forest management has often sought to protect forests from such disturbances, but in the process we have disrupted processes of change that are very much integral to the functioning of forest ecosystems. To appreciate how

Jaboury Ghazoul

6. Past, present, and future
The past: a history of European deforestation
Over forty years ago, Henry Darby, widely regarded as Britain’s first and best-known historical geographers, suggested that ‘the most important single factor that has changed the European landscape is the clearing of the woodland’. A human history of forests is largely one of deforestation, and is as old as human history itself. Hunter-gatherers leave fewer tangible marks on the environment compared to farmers, yet their effects on forests can still be substantial. Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic people in Europe used stone axes to clear a little woodland around